David Holdt is an under appreciated yet tremendously talented writer and thinker, and also one of the better teachers on the face of the planet. He taught for over 30 years at the excellent progressive private school, Watkinson, in Hartford, CT – and his class there, Writer’s Workshop, has probably changed the lives of most of the students that attended during that tenure. He still teaches at the University of Hartford, right across campus from Watkinson, and now lives in Tolland, CT. He might have a functioning website soon, if I can talk him into it, or if he already has plans for one and I just haven’t heard yet. Either way, I will also try to talk him into some modest blogging, but that may take a while.
The above is my effort to encapsulate Mr. Holdt, having realized now that people indeed do google David Holdt, and in the top ten results an old post of mine comes up that was the end result of a struggle to communicate to David a google map indicating the best places to park for Red Sox games in my old neighborhood in Boston.
Now as much as I like to advertise that David Holdt and I are friends, or that I try to get him to go to Red Sox games as much as possible, or that I know where to park for such games, if I had a car, which I don’t – if my meager website mentions of his name are one of the only google representations of such a great person….then that situation needed to be remedied. So now that first paragraph will work its way into the top ten results hopefully. A trick, perhaps, but as Holdt always says about Wikipedia, if you read it on the internet, it has to be true. (citation needed) (actually one is not, David Holdt hates Wikipedia.) (citation definitely unneeded)
In addition, since you’re obviously interested enough in David Holdt to click thru to my somewhat-very-less-important-than-his-impact-on-the-world-website – you might as well watch the speech he gave at his retirement gala this past Saturday, which is also his YouTube debut!
and, if you’re really really feeling like indulging yourself, you can even read the speech I gave at that same gala. (Altho my feeling is it read better than in reads) (And since I handed in, one last time, my final edit [the edits in pen at the table as I waited to speak] I have tried to fix it again with a few minor changes, including the massive typo in the first words of the first sentence which scrambled my brain at the already nervous beginning of my speech – until after a 5 second [unwittingly dramatic] pause, I got it right and began)
Expand this post below or download to read it… they both come complete with the cool hyperlinks a speech can’t have when you read it on paper. Unless you’re a robot.